Note A3-7-1 — Chapter III

Colbert advised the companies in Lyons to consider the privileges granted them only as crutches, by means of which they might learn to walk the soonest possible, it being the intention afterwards to do away with them. (Journ. des Econom., Mai, 1854, p. 277.) Thiers said, in the chamber of deputies, in 1834: Employé comme représailles,[TN 132] le tarif est funeste; Comme faveur, il est abusif; Comme encouragement à une industrie exotique, qui n'est pas importable il est impuissant et inutile. Employé pour protéger un produit, qui a chance de réussir, il est bon; mais il est bon temporairement, il doit finer quand l'education de l'industrie est finie, quand elle est adulte. Schmitthenner, Zwölf Bücher vom Staate, I, 657 ff., admits that full freedom of trade between England and Germany would be advantageous to the world in general; but that England might here secure the entire gain even at the cost of Germany, in part. Schmitthenner's view is distinguished from that of List's, against which Schmitthenner zealously seeks to maintain the priority of his own (II, 365), disadvantageously enough, by this, that it contains no pledge of subsequent freedom of trade. List, on the contrary, considers universal freedom of trade, not only as the ideal, but also as the object which is to be striven for by temporary limitations on trade; an object, indeed, attainable only where there are a great many nations highly developed and in an equal degree, just as perpetual peace supposes a plurality of states equal in power. Ges. Schr., II, 35; III, 194. Compare, on this point, Hildebrand, N. O. der Gegenwart und Zukunft, I, 87. That Carey advocates a perpetual protective tariff is connected with his absolute inability to conceive the Malthusian law of population. (Held, Carey's Socialwissenschaft und das Merkantilsystem,[TN 133] 1866, p. 166.)

Thus, for instance, the prohibition of foreign cloths in Florence begins in 1393, that is, at a time when the protected industry had long been developed, so that its products were exported on a great scale, but when it began to fear the young, vigorous, competition of the Flemings.